That's not the only one, since Amuro Ray and Char are Dr. Newton Geiszler and Herc Hansen respectively.

Channel Hop: For the sequel, in terms of its distributor. Due to Legendary Pictures' contract with Warner Bros. having expired in 2014, and the former having signed a 5-year deal with Universal starting in 2014, it will now be distributed in the US by Universal. However, despite Legendary and WB's deal ending, the latter will still distribute the film overseas.

Darkhorse Casting: Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi and Idris Elba are pushed into the top billing as the protagonists. Elba is already famous thanks to his role as the titular character in Luther and Heimdal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while Kikuchi is only known for her Oscar-nominated role in Babel. Unless one watches Sons of Anarchy, mainstream audiences don't know who Charlie Hunnam is. Asides from Elba, Ron Perlman is another recognized name in the movie.

Dawson Casting: If you do the math, Mako, Raleigh, and Chuck are all quite a bit younger than their actors.

Inverted with young Mako, who was played by a then-seven-year-old actress despite being thirteen during Onibaba's attack on Tokyo according to the official timeline.

Deleted Scene: A couple of scenes were deleted from the film, now available for viewing on DVD and Blu-Ray special features. Newt's introduction was originally longer with him and Raleigh antagonizing one another, and later on there was a scene between Chuck and his father Herc after the fight between Chuck and Raleigh where Herc chastises Chuck for his behavior only for Chuck to retaliate by claiming that Herc was a bad or at least often absent father and saying that they wouldn't have anything to do with each other at all if it weren't for their drift compatibility. Without this latter scene Stacker's line about Chuck having "daddy issues" becomes more random and ultimately makes Chuck a less sympathetic character than he could have been.

Development Gag: "Tales From Year Zero" is full of references to earlier versions of the script before Guillermo del Toro became involved with the project; for example, the comic's main character Naomi Sokolov was the film's deuteragonist, traveling the world to find out the reasons behind the Kaiju, and the simulated death of Yancy Becket by Kaiju tongue was how he actually died.

Doing It for the Art: The sheer amount of detail that went into the concept and production of the film shows just how much love Guillermo put into it.

Fake Nationality: The Russian pilots, Aleksis and Sasha Kaidanovsky of the Russian Jaeger, Cherno Alpha are played by the very Canadian Robert Maillet and Heather Doersken. The Hansen father-son duo of Herc Hansen and Chuck Hansen are played by Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky who are an American and a Brit respectively. As are the two actors portraying the German scientists Newton Geiszler and Herman Gottlieb — Charlie Day is American and Burn Gorman is British (but was born in the US). Clifton Collins, an American actor of Mexican and German descent, plays the Chinese-Peruvian Tendo Choi. The Wei Tang triplets are played by the Vietnamese/Chinese-Canadian Luu triplets. And, of course, the British Charlie Hunnam as the American Raleigh Becket.

Half-Remembered Homage: Guillermo del Toro noted in an interview with Ain't It Cool News that, while preparing for the film, he made a point of not rewatching the kaiju and giant robot films that influenced him, and he told his design team to likewise abstain. Del Toro wanted his pastiche to have subconscious homages to the movies he loved, rather than deliberate copying from them.

Line to God: Travis Beacham, co-writer for Pacific Rim, has a tumblr and answers questions, posts comments about the canon, and various other things relating to the film.

Viral Marketing: A viral site titled Pan Pacific Defense Corps was set up showing map covering blueprints of Jaegers from around the world and a video showing a kaiju attack. A later update allows you to sign up as a member and take a quiz for your role in the PPDC.

Writer Travis Beacham came up with the idea that Rinko Kikuchi's character Mako Mori was going to speak entirely in Japanese for the first half of the movie and her partner Raleigh wouldn't understand her. Then when they finally got their connection calibrated in the Jaeger he would hear her in English. Despite him seeing it as a good idea, he realised it would have been a chore to have the two leads speaking in different languages for the first half of the movie.

The aliens were originally written as full-out Abusive Precursors. They created our universe to escape the entropic death of their own.

One of the earlier outlines had less diversity, with the Russian, Chinese and Australians swapped out for more Japanese pilots and the Shatterdome being in Japan. Also, Knifehead's death was going to be more akin to Shinji blacking out and Eva 01 going berserk

Crimson Typhoon was originally going to have four arms and be piloted by quadruplets, but it was already hard enough to find the Chinese triplets who were cast in the role so Typhoon's arms were reduced to three. In another draft, they were all female.

In the original draft of the film's script, Tacit Ronin is the only named active Jaeger in service alongside Gipsy Danger. Its pilots, Duc Jessop and Kaori Koyamada, developed a connection with Raleigh and Mako, going from uncertainty to camaraderie. It also had a laser capable of cleaving even a Category 5 Kaiju in half, and faced three of them in the original finale.

The Matador Fury was cut from the film due to time concerns.

Less important in the scheme of things but Raiju's inner head was more snake-like and he gave a bit more trouble in the novelization. Concept art of this longer and less horse shaped head is at the PR wiki.

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